Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(43)

“What would you do if you could earn a living any way you chose?” I asked.

“I’m not sure.” He shrugged. “I haven’t ever had much choice in the matter.”

Sympathy welled up. I knew what that felt like.

“Maybe I would have been a messenger, or gone into service with the crown someday if Nismae hadn’t broken away from it. I like to travel. I like to move fast—and I’m good at it.”

I could see it even in the way he’d behaved since we had left the Tamers’ forest. He liked to be moving, and it put a spring in his step to be headed somewhere new.

“You would be good at that,” I said.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Honestly, I never thought I would leave home. I was a good herbalist. I liked helping and healing people. I just wanted a family someday, even if I had to cobble it together.” I thought also of Miriel’s dark warnings, of her promise to the wind god. It was too late to hold to any of those now. I hoped that someday I’d be able to help people again, maybe even to have a community where I belonged.

“You aren’t doing so badly at the adventuring,” Hal pointed out.

I smiled weakly. He didn’t know how terribly I’d failed, to end up here in the first place.

A few fat drops of rain slapped down on us, warning us of a spring shower about to come. We pulled up our hoods, ending the conversation, keeping our heads down as we hurried onward.

We stopped for the night long after the fierce ache of my feet had faded into numbness. As twilight fell we came upon an abandoned farmhouse and decided to make camp. The fields around it lay as fallow as the others we’d passed earlier in the day. Water glistened in the few furrows remaining in the dirt and reflected the gray and purple of the dimming sky. Weeds sprouted haphazardly throughout the field, having grown quickly after the recent rain.

The two of us trekked down the overgrown path to the house, only to find that most of the roof had burned away and caved in several moons ago. A family of skunks peered out curiously at us from a den they’d built in the fireplace. The copse of trees behind the house suddenly seemed like a far better option.

“I’ll hunt if you can put camp together,” Hal said.

I nodded, surprised he’d made the offer before me, but grateful that my sore feet wouldn’t have to trek any farther. “Will a lean-to be enough?”

“Should be. The winds are most likely to come from the north or the west, but I can wake you up if that changes.” He disappeared into the field as soon as I’d nodded my acknowledgment of his words.

I gathered branches and fashioned us a rustic shelter, thinking about the way he’d tipped his ear to the wind before he had answered me. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. Perhaps, like my ability to unravel Leozoar’s magic, the Farhearing was simply a gift I hadn’t yet discovered. I needed guidance to know what else I could do. My ability to repurpose Leozoar’s magic for other things surely represented some connection to the wind, didn’t it? Maybe a chance still existed that I could be the wind god’s daughter. But all I heard were the last soft chirps of nearby birds returning to their nests. The hollow inside me grew deeper and darker, as vast as my uncertainty about who I really was and who I might belong to.

Hal returned with two lean hares already skinned and gutted, then quietly went about the business of preparing them for the fire. I got the blaze going as he worked, then sat beside it, chilled in spite of the dancing flames. All at once the world felt so large and so empty. My anger hadn’t relented, and still I missed Ina. I longed for a shoulder to lean my head on, for something familiar. For the intoxicating peals of her laughter or the way her eyes sparkled when I knew she desired me.

I wanted to know that none of those moments had been lies.

I hung my head.

“Asra?” Hal said, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“I’m all right,” I said, pressing the palms of my hands into my eyes. “I’m just upset about what happened with me and Ina.”

“I thought you two were . . .” He gestured, and if I hadn’t still been trying to gather up the shattered pieces of my heart, I might have laughed at his awkwardness.

“Not anymore,” I said softly. Definitely never in the future that stretched forward from this moment. When I remembered the hatred in her eyes, I found it hard to believe that anything—even the Fatestone—could make things right between us again. I ran my fingers over the black ribbon of the courting bracelet still on my left wrist. The time had come to take it off, but I couldn’t do it. I deserved the painful reminder of all I’d destroyed. Maybe if I kept it, it would remind me never to be such a fool again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The simple words made me tear up. Hal let me lean my head on his shoulder until my sobs eased. He never offered any false condolences. He simply existed beside me and let me be and did not ask any more questions. I wished I’d had someone like him in my old life—someone who joked with me, who wasn’t afraid of me, who liked me for exactly who I was. Someone who didn’t lie to me. He always just pointed out the facts, reminding me that I had done more good than I realized.

That night I slept fitfully beside him, periodically keeping one eye on the horizon. But when the birds began to sing and dawn cracked the horizon with her silver hands, there was no sign of the dragon or the girl.